Chapter 7 #2
Vivian sent back the middle finger emoji. I saved the screenshot. Emotional evidence, proof of our ongoing, ridiculous battle of wills. In those moments, I realized our rituals weren’t just about movies; they were about carving space for the parts of ourselves that didn’t fit anywhere else.
When it came to restaurants, the stakes were lower, the opinions just as fierce.
Vivian, a culinary adventurer and cilantro enthusiast, believed cilantro was refreshing.
I, Quinton, defender of the bland, insisted it tasted like soap.
We ordered extra on the side—her way of honoring my taste buds, my way of silently surrendering, and moved on to more important debates, like whether salsa was better chunky or smooth.
We sampled every hole-in-the-wall taco joint in New Haven, ranking them on salsa quality, tortilla freshness, and—our favorite metric—structural integrity under pressure.
Vivian liked her tacos bold and messy; I appreciated engineering.
Together, we created a spreadsheet—me, channeling my inner data nerd; Vivian, unleashing her color-coding obsession.
For us, taco rankings were more than a hobby; they became a ritual, a way to claim a corner of an overwhelming city and make it feel like ours.
With every cell and every color, we were building a home, one taco at a time.
Vivian called it efficiency. I called it survival.
Maybe we needed professional help—or maybe, just maybe, we had stumbled onto the kind of friendship where even the quirkiest rituals meant everything.
In a city built to swallow you whole, our spreadsheet was a tiny, colorful rebellion.
And if anyone ever questioned our methods, we had the data—and the memories—to prove them wrong.
A SPREADSHEET. Not just numbers, but proof we belonged somewhere, with each other.
I made it. Vivian color-coded it. And every time we updated a row, we reminded ourselves that, for now, we were winning—at tacos, at movies, at finding each other in the chaos. Possibly both efficient and absurd. But definitely us.
We were either the most efficient people alive, or we needed professional help. Either way, we found a home in the rituals—quirky, stubborn, heartfelt, and uniquely ours.
And then there was the infamous clothes shopping incident. A moment that started out as ordinary as any of our rituals but somehow grew into a cornerstone of our ongoing debates.
To this day, I still couldn’t tell you how we went from window shopping to full-fledged opinion warfare.
One minute, I was just minding my own business, and the next, Vivian had me inside the store, holding court by the dressing racks.
It was like being swept into one of our salsa debates, only this time, instead of tortilla integrity, it was color theory and sleeve length.
Vivian, armed with a blue sundress, shot me a look. “What do you think?” She wielded the hanger like a challenge, daring me to cross the line between safe commentary and brutal honesty.
I blinked. “You want my opinion? Like, my actual opinion?”
The memory still makes me grin.
Her eyebrow arched with that ‘don’t mess with me’ smirk. She didn’t just want an answer; she wanted ammunition for the next round of our ongoing banter.
“Yes. The unfiltered version,” she replied, eyes sparkling.
I hesitated, making a face. “Not the polite, ‘that looks nice’ that people say to avoid a meltdown?”
Vivian snorted. “Quinton, when have I ever asked for lies? If I wanted bland approval, I’d ask your jeans.”
Fair point. And honestly, I loved that about her. When other people dodged disagreement, she rushed in with open arms, or, in this case, open dressing room doors.
“It’s fine,” I said at last, my tone as neutral as unsalted chips. “But the green one is better.” I braced myself for a debate, maybe an argument, possibly a salsa-related analogy for color.
She blinked. “The green one?”
“Yeah, the blue washes you out, but the green makes your eyes pop. It’s like, if you were a nacho, the green would be the fresh jalapeno—not just garnish, but a gamechanger.”
Vivian held my gaze for a beat that felt longer than it should have. Then she shrugged, smirked, and bought the green one—like settling the chunky versus smooth salsa debate with a decisive scoop.
When she wore it that weekend, I saw her step into the sunlight and—well, I looked away.
Not because I didn’t want to see, but because if I kept staring, I would have to admit that my opinion mattered to her, and that was a whole new kind of terrifying.
My heart hammered out an embarrassing rhythm, loud enough to drown out even our fiercest tortilla debates.
There were moments I wanted to bottle—her laughter after a bad joke, her grin when she won an argument, the way she tipped her head at me like she was daring me to disagree.
Our conversations spilled into everything: politics, religion, whether pineapple belonged on pizza (she insisted yes; I declared no; we ordered half-and-half and spent twenty minutes debating if that counted as compromise or cowardice), and, of course, the sacred art of nacho construction.
“If you stack the chips before you add the cheese, its structural calamity,” I said, channeling my inner taco engineer.
“You, sir, are a nacho anarchist,” Vivian replied, waving a tortilla chip like a gavel.
“Order matters. Cheese is the glue of society.”
Somewhere between the salsa jokes and existential debates, we built a friendship as sturdy as the perfect nacho tower—messy, layered, and surprisingly resilient.
Vivian didn’t just have opinions; she had conviction.
Most people heard “I disagree” and retreated.
Vivian heard it and leaned in, like a contender in a championship debate, eager for the next round.
It was exhilarating—and, if I were being honest, exhilarating in the way that roller coasters were exhilarating: thrilling, with a hint of danger if you let yourself get too close to the edge.
And, somewhere between baseball games, hiking trails, movie marathons, and spreadsheet-fueled taco rankings, I started to realize: I was counting down the hours, not to the end of my shift, but to seeing her again. That feeling was both wonderful and utterly destabilizing.